OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, as part of lengthier comments made recently at AMD’s Advancing AI event, said that as AI reasoning continues to grow, increasing the need for greater model efficiency, his company will continue to require “tons of compute, tons of memory” as part of its AI infrastructure.
That is not only terrific news for the AMDs and Nvidias of the world, who are supplying OpenAI with AI chips, but also Micron Technology, a key supplier of memory chips used by both of those firms and many others. Specifically, Micron provides Nvidia with HBM3E and newer HBM4 memory chips, among others, and announced at the time of that same AMD event that its HBM3E is designed into AMD’s new Instinct MI350 Series GPUs. (It is also assumed by market watchers that Micron will play an important role in AMD’s HBM4 memory needs in the future.)
All of the above points to a bright future for Micron. In the company’s recent fiscal third quarter earnings report, which included record revenue of $9.3 billion for the just completed quarter, Micron said the for fiscal Q4 it is expecting “a robust demand environment and expect to grow revenue by 15% sequentially to a record $10.7 billion at guidance mid-point.”
The fiscal Q3 figure represented 37% year-over-year growth and a sequential increase of 15%. Much of that surge came from the company’s Compute and Networking Business Unit, which delivered $5.1 billion in the quarter, up 11% sequentially, a quarterly record. “This performance was driven by a nearly 50% sequential increase in HBM,” said Micron CEO and President Sanjay Mehrotra. He added that “the overwhelming majority” of the company’s 2025 capex outlay of $14 billion is being spent to support HBM.
He also said Micron has “reorganized” itself to better address the increasing AI opportunity. “In June, we… completed a strategic reorganization of our business units around key market segments to capitalize on the tremendous AI growth opportunity ahead. As high-performance memory and storage become increasingly critical to enabling AI-driven innovation, this new structure enhances Micron’s ability to engage more deeply with customers by shifting more resources to AI-focused opportunities across our portfolio.”
Mehrotra added, “We are exceptionally well positioned for the ramp of HBM4. Building on the success of our HBM3E ramp, we have high-quality, field-proven technology and have executed a robust and significant ramp in our HBM manufacturing capacity. We have deep relationships with practically every major customer of HBM and have earned their trust with our execution, delivering the world’s lowest-power, highest-performance HBM.”
Despite the positive vibes, some stock analysts are also acknowledging potential negative factors, including declining memory prices and the possibility for eventual lower demand for memory to take hold in some market segments. MU stock had been climbing throughout June along with many other AI-related stocks, though it was down a little more than 1% as of mid-afternoon on June 27, the day after earnings were reported.